Gary's return in Journeys was something. It hadn't occurred to me that he hadn't been around since DP, but yeah, unless he had an unvoiced cameo at some point in XY that I just don't remember, there's no way he appeared. Which is funny, because even Tracey, who the writers apparently hate, got an unvoiced cameo in BW. Doing the quick math, that's a 535 episode gap, which is astonishing. Misty's gap in appearances between AG and SM was 573 episodes, for comparison, not counting Master of Mirage Pokemon or any flashbacks/dream sequences.
At first I thought Gary was being weirdly possessive of Ash, but it turns out he was just goading Goh to join Project Mew so he could fight him in research. The sense I get from others here is that Project Mew is a bit of a let down in its conclusion, but the idea of the Trial Missions in finding neat Pokemon artifacts sounds appealing. I figured that was what the Volteccers would be doing when the first Horizons news items were coming out, so I'm excited to see how it plays out here.
I feel bad for Ash's Infernape though. It apparently has been training to get stronger, but it'll never end up getting to use that because his trainer has to reset his team each season and never calls in reserves aside from Charizard. Since Journeys has a lot of episodes focusing on cameos from Ash's old companions, it would've been nice to see more rotations to get cameos from his old Pokemon. I miss Oshawott.
>>54442265>AG>Ash's Gym challenges were a mixed bag, because the writers couldn't make the battle system in the anime consistent with itself, let alone with the games 